Let’s kick off this “Trailer Tuesday” with my favourite film of the year so far – Panos Cosmatos’ Mandy (2018). For me, this is Cage Rage by Tor Books and I completely love it. Mandy is so clearly defined in its aesthetic bravura, so hilariously aware of its fantastic absurdity. Cosmatos’ direction is stunning, managing to swing between hilarity, tragedy, awe, and back again within the same scene. (Plus, it’s always great to see the dildo from Se7en still working.)

Another recent theatrical highlight was Greg Durrell’s Design Canada (2018), a highly congratulatory but very entertaining documentary about Canada’s golden age of design. It’s a tremendously enjoyable survey of European modernism’s influence on Canada’s iconography established in the 1960s and 1970s and contains wonderful footage of Expo 67. From the flag to the CN logo, from the Canada lettermark to the CBC symbol, this is iconography of a generation of Canadians and its nice to see it celebrated.

A top prize winner of last year’s Saskatoon Fantastic Film Festival, Bill Watterson’s Dave Made a Maze (2017) is set to reach the UK in 2019 compliments of Arrow Video and the label has a trailer promoting the news. What you see is what you get as the video goes full craft project with cardboard environments and a paper bag spokesman. If you like this, you’ll probably love Dave Made a Maze.

I really enjoyed Get Out (2017) but at the time felt that it was basically a post-millennial Twilight Zone episode. Maybe I was more right than I expected as Jordan Peele will assume Rod Serling’s role in a CBS reboot of The Twilight Zone in 2019. I must say that I adore how the music and iconography of the original series is maintained and how Serling and Peele’s voices intertwine. I’ll definitely be checking it out when it arrives on the small screen. (Can we even talk about cinema and TV in big screen-small screen terms anymore?)

I rarely use MMC! for negative comments, but I so rarely see a trailer as disastrous as the one for Steven Knight’s Serenity (2018). One might ask “What is this movie about?” but I prefer the question: “Do you think the trailer’s editor was even told what the film was about?” This feels like movie advertising Mad Libs – a bunch of random images strung together by movie trailer clichés. Sadly, I expect this might be Serenity‘s high point.